>In my app I use a Create Report command, then I USE the report as a table so I can go make some changes to it.
>
>Here's the really weird thing. When I ran the .exe, as soon as I did a REPLACE command in the .frx, VFP was somehow loosing scope of the .dbc! I spent forever trying to figure out what was causing this. Finnaly, I noticed that the report I was creating has included in my project...so I 'excluded' it from the project file, recompiled, an ta-da! It works. Obviously I'm glad the sucker is funtioning properly, but why on earth would this cause the problem?

The others have told you what and how; here's some of the why:

The files included in the project are "more visible" than the files Fox can find elsewhere. I've had phantom files like that (and I guess many of us did). The file on the current directory may be whatever you want, Fox will still use the one within the project - it takes precedence over any other file of the same name.

Just keep it in the project but mark as excluded - it will stay marked. Add a comment in the project with lots of exclamation marks, like "This freakin' report must stay excluded!!!!" or something like that; that will show up in the status bar of the project manager once the file is selected there.